Abstract
When mankind had become corrupted in the period preceding the flood, God said: ‘My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for he is flesh; his days shall be a hundred and twenty years’ (Gen. 6:3). Ancient interpreters, both Jews and Christians, did not agree about the interpretation of these words. It would seem fitting to discuss the various views of this limitation of mankind’s lifespan to 120 years on the occasion of the celebration of our esteemed colleague Albert van der Heide’s sixtieth birthday, since he has now achieved half this span.
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Footnotes
See M. Harl e.a., La Genèse, La Bible d’Alexandrie, vol. I (Paris 1986) 125–126.
Thus A. Kamesar, Jerome, Greek Scholarship and the Hebrew Bible. A Study of the Quaestiones Hebraicae in Genesim (Oxford 1993) 185.
In the Vulgate Jerome keeps strictly to the wording of the Hebrew text, in spite of what he writes in his Quaestiones Hebraicae in Genesim 6:3, quoted below in the text. The Jewish Bible translator Symmachus seems to have followed the LXX here.
J.L. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible. A Guide to the Bible As It Was at the Start of the Common Era. (Cambridge, MA/London 1998) 184.
Kugel, Traditions, 183.
See J. Maier, Die Qumran-Essener. Die Texte vom Toten Meer II (München-Basel 1995) 194 with n. 284, and esp. F. García Martínez, ‘Interpretations of the Flood in the Dead Sea Scrolls’, in F. García Martínez and G.P. Luttikhuizen, eds, Interpretations of the Flood (Leiden 1999) 86-108, esp. 99f. with extensive bibliography at 100, n. 36-37.
See J.T.A.G.M. Ruiten, ‘The Interpretation of the Flood Story in the Book of Jubilees’, in Garcia Martínez and Luttikhuizen, eds, Interpretations, 83.
For the dating of the Targums to the Torah see U. Gleßmer, Einleitung in die Targume zum Pentateuch (Tübingen 1995) passim.
B. Grossfeld, Targum Neofiti I: An Exegetical Commentary to Genesis (New York 2000).
Translation by M. McNamara, Targum Neofiti I: Genesis. The Aramaic Bible I A (Edinburgh 1992) 72.
Translation by M. Maher, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Genesis. The Aramaic Bible IB (Edinburgh 1992) 38.
M. Klein, The Fragment Targums of the Pentateuch vol. 2 (Rome 1980) 10.
A. Sperber, The Bible in Aramaic, vol. I (Leiden 1992) 9.
References to other passages with this motif can be found in R. Le Déaut, Targum du Pentateuque I: Genèse (Paris 1978) 114, and in L. Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews vol. 5 (Philadelphia 1925) 174, n. 19. One might add Avoth de-R. Nathan (A) 32 and Bereshit Rahha XXVI 6.
Ch. Mercier, ed., Quaestiones et solutiones in Genesim I. Les oeuvres de Philon d’Alexandrie 34A (Paris 1979) 165–171.
Translation by L.H. Feldman, Flavius Josepbus, vol. 3: Judaean Antiquities I-4 (Leiden 2000) 28–29.
Translation by H. Jacobson, A Commentary on Pseudo-Pkilo’s Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum vol. I (Leiden 1996) 172.
Translation by C.T.R. Hayward, Saint Jerome’s Hebrew Questions on Genesis (Oxford 1995) 37. I owe the reference to Jerome to A. Louth, ed., Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Old Testament, vol. I: Genesis I-II (Downers Grove 2001) 124-125, who also quotes Ephrem’s commentary on Genesis ad locum.
Translation by H. Bettenson, Augustine: Concerning the City of God (Harmondsworth 1972) 642. Further references to Christian writers can be found in Ginzberg, Legends V, 174.
See e.g. the evidence collected in W. Adler, Time Immemorial. Archaic History and its Sources in Christian Chronography from Julius Africanus to George Syncellus (Washington 1989), and A. Kamesar, Jerome, Greek Scholarship and the Hebrew Bible. A Study of the Quaestiones Hebraicae in Genesim (Oxford 1993).
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van der Horst, P.W. (2003). ‘His Days Shall Be One Hundred and Twenty Years’ Genesis 6:3 in Early Judaism and Ancient Christianity. In: Berger, S., Brocke, M., Zwiep, I., Fontaine, R., Munk, R. (eds) Zutot 2002. Zutot: Perspectives on Jewish Culture, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0199-1_2
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